[Lexicog] Newbie

[Mike Maxwell]

kozmikcallie wrote:
 > ... I'm very interested in working as a lexicographer but I
 > have no idea how to get started. It helps that I live in the same city

Ronald Moe wrote:
> The best background for a lexicographer is a degree in linguistics. You 
> would need a good all-round program with courses in phonetics, 
> phonology, morphology, syntax, discourse grammar, socio-linguistics, 
> historical linguistics, and semantics. 

I would mostly defer to Ron, who knows a lot more about lexicography 
than I ever will.  However, I would also say that a lot depends on what 
kind of lexicography you want to do, for what purpose, and in what 
languages.  If you want to work on English for popular dictionaries, for 
example, that's one thing (and, I would think, a pretty filled-up 
field).  If you want to work on literate languages which are spoken by 
sizable minorities in certain countries, such as Catalan in Europe or 
perhaps Telegu in India, then that's a different question.  Or if you 
want to work on endangered languages, or lexicography for computational 
purposes, those are still different.

General linguistics is probably a good start for any of these (along 
with computational linguistics), but the emphasis within linguistics 
would--I think--vary widely.

    Mike Maxwell

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